The Waiting
by Kasumi Sora
Summary: Everyone has been separated from Mana and each other. [ManKan, vaguely ItsKan]


**DISCLAIMER:** This is a work of fan fiction produced for entertainment purposes only. I only wish I were making money from this.

Title: The Waiting  
Fandom: Aquarian Age: Juvenile Orion  
Prompt: 65. Passing  
Word Count: 1152  
Rating: G

Not totally beta read.

Co-written with Mimi (trickyneckomata). Thanks babe.

* * *

Xi-shin Shiba had become a man who lived in his body more than his head. He didn't waste time pondering actions; he took them. He no longer took the time to fret over what might have been, or struggle to make sense of what he was feeling. He experienced, acted, dreamed, felt, and moved on. His body was instrument of the greatest precision, and it kept perfect time. He was never late anymore. Not to anything. 

He was also acutely aware that no matter where he was, what he was doing, a small part of himself was somewhere else, with someone else.

And he didn't know where that someone else was now. He could feel her, just light warmth around his heart, and he knew she was alive.

Alive, but that wasn't enough.

Xi-shin found there was little he could do to calm the burning unease her absence placed in his body. Except run. Train. Fight. Then run some more. In the two months they had been apart, Xi-shin ran more miles around the mountain than he was away from Mana.

**-oOo-**

Tomonori worried and pondered. Then told himself not to. He thought through everything that had happened, long after the events had taken place. He sat by the window, collar undone, in an attempt to relax, and as he gazed out at the stars worried and pondered some more.

**-oOo-**

Tuskasa worried about Kaname's injury, and Mana's whereabouts. About Itsuki peril, and Haunra's silent tears as she kiss his cheek good-bye. About what it meant to be part of the war without a faction to side on. About how quiet Tomonori had been growing since they left the house.

He worried till he fell asleep every night. There he saw his fears, his hopes, and the smiling faces of his friends.

**-oOo-**

For seventeen long days, her bother slept.

In that time Haruna would nod off too. She slept sitting, wedged uncomfortably into a small plastic-covered recliner, that didn't allow her feet to touch the floor. When she woke she would just watch him in the deadly silence that beeping machines, and whispered consoling words could not enter.

No more mind link to one another; her thoughts couldn't reach his. And she wondered if this was anything like the loneliness he felt for the seven years while she had been locked away in the hospital.

No, even then they had that small connection of minds. Like the warmth that she could feel from her master now, a small comfort in the dark room. She could feel all of them, if she tired, but not him. Not Nayoa, who laid right in front of her, quietly waiting for death to call him.

**-oOo-**

Mana never understood why Kaname and Itsuki liked to sit on rooftops. In high school it had made some kind of sense. The roof was a quite place to get away. They had even used it to meet on several times. But it was a tradition they continued long after high school. When the two of them were missing, you wouldn't have to look far, just up. She had asked Kaname once why it was so special, and he just shrugged, "It's just what we do."

It made her a little jealous sometimes that there was something he shared with Itsuki, that he wouldn't with her. That there was something about him that she just didn't understand. But she had never voiced it, and never would. She knew it was a silly, petty thing to be upset over.

She was beginning to understand though, that certain magic about sitting on a roof. Though she doubted the peace she had found there was anything like what they had. Up on the roof of the apartment complex she was in right now she had a clear view on the sky. Itsuki had thought it best she leave Tokyo, so she was in small town in northwest Japan.

She came up here almost every night now, just to see the stars. Like the first night they had had all stood together, not as comrades in battle, but as friends. Sometimes she would cry at the aching loss she felt, knowing that a time like that might not ever come again. Sometimes she would think of each of them, trying to reach out with her mind to feel them there.

She didn't know where any of them were now.

She thought Isshin had gone into the mountains, the spot where he liked to train. She knew he was really in as much danger as Itsuki, and worried no less for him. Even if he had gotten away from the middle of the battle, he was still alone during a war.

She knew Tomonori and Tuskasa were together, but she had no idea what had happened to them. She didn't even get to see them before she left. Maybe, she hoped, they would be left out of the fray. Tomonori didn't have easily found ties to Itsuki. And Tusaksa answered to no one.

They had come after Kaname though. He wasn't badly injured, but not wishing to take any chances, he too, had left the city. She knew Kaname was close by. She had seen him twice, since arriving here. Quick meetings, until Haruna sent news that things were at least a little safer than they were before.

She knew Itsuki and Haruna were probably where she had left them. Facing the wrath of a dived E.G.O., crying for their blood. She still wasn't sure how it happened, but they had found out about her. She understood the situation well enough. It had been something they had all been very afraid for a while, but the way it manifested was unexpected.

Itsuki had been in his destined place as the head of the Itsuki family for two years. He brought the Itsuki family to the head of the E.G.O. faction once again. He had bought some small amount of alliance and peace with the other factions. But now it came out that a leader of one of the main families in E.G.O. had been compromised by a mindbreaker. He had been quickly declared a traitor, along with Haruna.

There were a few among E.G.O. who had stood behind him though. They said it didn't matter, for the moment, if he was mindbroken or not. He had changed things for the better for all of them, and there should be a better way to deal with it.

She didn't know the details, and knew that if she hadn't insisted on knowing what was going on, Itsuki wouldn't have told her the truth. She knew she was lucky to know what little she did.

But it didn't help the waiting. That was the worse part, the not knowing, the wondering, and the endless time to think about it all.

All she could do is wait.

**-oOo-**

* * *


End file.
